Eat Your Heart Out
by ollie-craft
Summary: Josh and Gabi aren't waiting for each other; they're changing for each other. Short GabixJosh end game fic. Complete.
1. Chapter 1 - In His Gut

"Gabi," he said when she picked up her cellphone, conscious of the clang and murmur of the diner on her end of the line, "come over and make me dinner."

"No can do, cowboy, got a hot date," she replied cheerfully.

There was no hint of artifice in her voice. But this was Gabi; it didn't mean she was telling the truth.

Josh didn't care even if she did have a hot date. Well, not much. Well, actually, more than he should—but not enough to deter him altogether.

"I'll pay you five hundred bucks," he offered gamely.

"Come by the diner for lunch and I'll make you a meal for five bucks, and you can leave a four hundred and ninety-five dollar tip," she returned.

"Can't make lunch." He fought to keep the frustration out of his tone. When his biggest client had called this morning to ask for a mid-day meeting, Josh hadn't been able to think of a lie fast enough, and God knew the truth wouldn't work. _No, I'm booked. I have an unnatural need to eat food cooked by my ex-girlfriend. I'm addicted to trying to make her laugh while I ignore her flirting with her other customers._

 _It's kind of a standing thing._

He could tell Gabi was disappointed when she blew out her breath. He could read her easily, even over the phone; she had so many secrets, and for all that, so few walls. "Well. Oh, my damn and all that."

One side of his mouth quirked up to hear those words out of her mouth. "I'll pay a grand," he said.

"You really want my sage, ricotta, and squash brown butter pizza tonight, huh, big boy?" She covered the receiver a moment to chat with a customer, and was muffled a moment. "You could do with a little less pizza, though, champ."

"Yeah, great diet tip, I'll pass it on to my nutritionist. In the meantime, _you_ could do with a little more money, I'd bet. Or is your new food processor going to buy itself?"

"I keep hoping it might. I leave the door unlocked every night in the hopes it'll show up on my counter one evening, tortilla chips in tow, and make me and Sofia a fresh bowl of mango salsa."

Josh outright grinned at that, and he hadn't had much cause to grin lately. He realized all at once that he'd been smiling, just a little, ever since Gabi had answered her phone. "Five grand," he said finally, not willing to let the dream die.

Missing lunch today would have been fine except that he hadn't seen Gabi since Tuesday, and he wouldn't be able to make it in again on a day she actually worked until Sunday. And the real problem was, their friendship was too fragile to mix with anything but food—specifically, food that she cooked and he paid for.

"Josh." There was warning in her tone. She was telling him he was getting close to one of the unpredictable land mines planted around her. Whether she'd planted them to defend herself or their fragile relationship, he didn't know. Both, he suspected. "It's not a good idea."

"C'mon, Gabi. I need a home-cooked meal _._ " _And to see your face, to see you move around my apartment. To stop being haunted by the memories there—by the fear that the memories are all that's left._ "There's nothing to be afraid of," he said aloud. "If you've proven one thing in the last year and a half, it's that you can definitely resist me. And now," he patted his tummy reflexively, "you have less to worry about. I'm not in peak form."

The noise on the other end of the line got quieter, and Josh found himself imagining that Gabi had tucked herself into a supply closet or the employee bathroom. "I actually couldn't, you know."

"Couldn't… what?"

She blew out another breath. "Resist you, you idiot. If you thought that was me resisting you, you weren't paying attention." He could almost see her shaking her head to clear it. "But we're not going over this again. It's not the time—we're not ready. I mean—God. I'm going on this date. With a nice guy who builds cabinets in his free time. And _he's_ going to make _me_ dinner, and _you're_ not going to interfere with this one."

He felt that low in his gut. Gabi's actions had hit him there so many times, it was no wonder he had developed padding to protect it. Bruises atop bruises.

He ventured more than he usually would have. The phone was making him brave. "We're not ready, you said. Does that mean you think we're gonna _be_ ready? Eventually?"

"I don't know, boss." There was a long pause, as she seemed to mull over, for once in her life, what she would say. That pause said she was serious like nothing else could have. "I… hope so."

"OK. OK." He noticed he'd been drawing on the butcher block paper on his desk, idly while they were talking, and there in his hand, the words "boss" and "hope" and "Gabi" all together. He drew a quick line through them. He didn't know why; Elliott would see them one way or another. His apartment was hopeless as a bastion of secrets. "Hey, answer me one more thing."

"Shoot."

"You weren't serious before when you said you leave the door open—for your future food processor? Because that's really danger—"

"You think Sofia would allow it?" she was laughing at the idea. "We had three deadbolts installed before we moved in, two at the base of the door so 'it can't be kicked in,' she tells me. And she won't let me keep a key on the top of the doorframe anymore, so…"

"Oh, good God. On top of the—you know what? Great. High five Sofia for me when you see her, Gabs." He scrawled 'hire Gabriella a bodyguard?' onto the paper in front of him for easily the dozenth time since he'd met her.

"Will do, tiger. And I'll save you a seat for lunch tomorrow?"

Well. Now she'd know the real reason he'd called. That was fine, though. He only had so much pride left, with Gabi. "Yeah—no. I can't make it until Sunday."

"Oh." There came a loud knocking from her end of the line. "God, Manuel, I'll be out in just a minute! Although why you bought a freezer that locks from the inside I'll never understand. OK—Josh. I'll… I guess I'll… see you Sunday?"

Maybe he could go in for pie this afternoon. No. He owed himself a jog. Actually, he owed several, and not only to himself. He'd only gained twenty pounds—well, okay, twenty-six—but that was an astonishing amount in so short a time. They'd all hit him just like Gabi: straight to his gut.

And if he ran far enough, maybe he'd forget she was going on this date tonight, and that he wouldn't see her until Sunday. If he ran far enough, he might even be able to buy himself a slice of pie to have with his lonely dinner in his lonely apartment and….

That aching in his gut wasn't getting less persistent. He cleared his throat. "Sunday. Count on it," was all he said.


	2. Chapter 2 - Bouillabaisse

Josh knew that _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ was no _Weight Watchers Complete Cookbook_ , but he kept hearing in his head what Gabi had said about her date yesterday: "and _he's_ cooking dinner for _me._ " So here it was, eight o'clock on a Friday night, and he was simmering bouillabaisse, a Provençal fish stew à la Julia Child, to go with her recipe for plain French bread that had been rising and being kneaded at intervals ever since he'd woken up far too early this morning. The only thought in his head had been inane—the fact that Gabi had left all of her baking supplies behind. He figured it was some final remnant of a dream about Gabi, brioche, and custard, that could have been either about Gabi and sex or Gabi and how fat he'd gotten.

He'd given up fighting all these connections. There was just some way in which food and Gabi couldn't be pulled apart for him, anymore. He was using her chopping boards and her tattered cookbook, her yeast and her packet of dried herbs. She wasn't here. He was. This wasn't waiting for her. This was… something else.

He'd figure it out eventually.

Still, when his cellphone buzzed with the opening chords of The Doors' "People Are Strange"—his doorman, calling to say someone was here for him—he couldn't help but hope it washer.

"Hey, Rayjack, how's it hanging?"

"Not too bad, Josh. I have a Sofia Rodriguez here, but you don't have her on your 'anytime' list…"

Josh thought for a split second. "Put her on it and send her up, would you?"

"You got it."

He spun to his liquor cabinet. Sofia could be here for only one of two reasons: to rage at him about something he'd done to Gabi, or to ask for help—with something to do with Gabi. She'd want wine, probably. Or tequila. He grabbed both.

"I'm sorry for barging in," Sofia said, oddly breathless although she'd clearly taken the elevator and not the stairs, to get here so fast. The stairs were a part of Josh's weight loss regimen and a way of managing his elevator phobia. He knew exactly how long the stairs took.

"No worries. You hungry? I was about to sit down and eat."

Sofia, still not having decided whether she would take off her gray corduroy jacket, went still in surprise. "You… cooked?"

"Yeah. Fish stew."

"For… for yourself?"

"No one else to do it."

"Yeah, I guess not." She pulled off her coat and tossed it on the back of the couch—her idea of graciously agreeing to stay for dinner, he supposed. "Do I smell homemade bread?"

"You do." Josh shook his head, bemused. "Cooking's not _that_ hard, you know. It's just time-consuming. My time is usually better spent doing something more…" He cut himself off, but Sofia heard what he didn't say.

"Lucrative?" she suggested easily, reaching for the corkscrew and the bottle of wine.

He shrugged, and didn't meet her eyes. "Pretty much. Anybody will deliver any kind of food. For a price."

Dispensing with the wine, Sofia moved ably to add an extra bowl across from his on the table, as he moved the dutch oven in which the stew had cooked onto a trivet and rustled around for a ladle.

"So," she said, "how come you're not paying that price tonight?"

"Why don't you set the table before you grill me?" he volleyed. The butter crock and two glasses of ice water were on the table before he could so much as cut the first slice of bread; Sofia moved swiftly and efficiently, and was watching him warily all the while.

Sofia's first loyalty, Josh well knew, would always be to Gabi. She didn't trust the same to be true of him.

When they were seated, bowls filled with wild cod, halibut, tomatoes, and clams in a broth it had taken Josh fully four hours to prepare according to the recipe's design, Sofia took her aim, steadied her face, and fired. "Josh. When I found out you came that night—that night you _Pretty Woman_ 'ed Gabi on our fire escape, or tried to—I kept your secret. I shouldn't have. If I hadn't, you and Gabi would have been spared all of this, or at least a year of this—heartache."

Josh let the tastes of saffron, fennel, leeks, parsley, thyme, and garlic flow down the sides of his tongue. Sofia's claim was harder to swallow. "No, we wouldn't have."

"You—how do you figure?" She sat with it a moment. "You think you would have had all the same stuff happen because you're our own local dark and twisty Meredith Grey, too broken for love, and you would have wrecked it all the same?"

"Yeah. I don't know who Meredith Grey is. But—yeah. That and…" he leaned his elbows onto the table, ready to level with her. "Gabi's too young for all this, Sofia. Not in years—well, not mainly—but in… caution. She's so—unburdened, so… unflagging. So damn hungry and she just swallows down every new experience that comes her way." He saw her struggle to contain herself and shot her a quelling glance. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Sofia. But… I do sometimes wonder if she's ever _met_ a man she didn't kiss."

Sofia rejected all that with a jerk of her head. "It's not all her fault, you know. She's—"

"Bright. Magnetic. Like a bonfire in a world otherwise lit only by cellphones. Volatile. Dangerous. Friendly. Warm—hot." He sighed the last. "You don't have to tell me that she attracts pretty much everyone she meets. Trust me, I get it."

"OK." Sofia gave up trying to pull the stubborn mussel out of its shell in her bowl. "The fairytale thing hasn't done her any favors, either."

"Right. I keep thinking—you know how _Pretty Woman_ originally ended? In the screenplay and the original filming?"

"Julia Roberts starts pimping out her hooker friends to her newfound wealthy businessman network and becomes the next Heidi Fleiss?" Sofia guessed.

"Close."

Sofia choked on her wine. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Richard Gere shoves her out of his limo, calls her a whore, throws money at her and drives away. And she's left to… pick up the pieces. The End."

"Christ." She took another long swallow. "You can _never_ tell Gabi that. Promise me."

He rolled his shoulders around. "I didn't treat her too much better, Sof."

"There's plenty of blame to go around between the two of you, bro." She took a steadying breath. "I came here tonight to tell you—Josh. She waited. When you left her—in Hawai'i. She was so sure you would come knocking on our door, like you always had before, to make up, to go for another round of whatever it is the two of you go for. For weeks. She waited, Josh. And I needed to tell you because I can't keep these secrets again if it's going to keep you unnecessarily apart for more time—more months, more years. Because I think—part of her is still waiting."

The silence stretched out between them so palpably that Sofia could almost feel it wrapping around her wrists. "Say something, Josh."

His hands lifted off the table and spread, fell, lifted again, like he was trying to figure out how to direct some unseen orchestra. Finally, he shrugged, trying to move around an invisible weight, and said only: "I know."

"Know… what?"

"I know she's waiting. Is almost… waiting."

"You… how do you know? And if you know… why didn't you come? Why don't you?"

"I could feel her. Those first days, especially. Pulling me. I wanted to go, every day. Hell, every minute. But I just, I knew if I came to her and said, be with me, you're the love of my life… the pattern would hold. And something has to change, in each of us, I think, for that pattern to change. There are things we can't let go of… things we want but can't name. So… yeah. We're both, I think, not exactly waiting."

"Wow. God." Sofia gave up all pretense of eating and pushed the bowl away. "That all sounds plausible, dude. Vague, but plausible."

"Everyday, basically, I fight it out. Part of me says: you idiot. Go to her. Ask her to go away with you, for a week, a month, a year, and work things out, give it the time it needs. And then again, if you could just get her into bed, maybe then…"

"Uh-huh. Sitcom stuff, Kaminsky. What do your better angels say?"

"Right. Exactly. They say we need more time. She needs time to build her career and to… hell, to sow her damn oats. I need time to understand how to avoid my mother's mistakes, my brother's, my own. And to figure out—other than Gabi—what it is that I'm missing."

Sofia was quiet. "You two are so fucking frustrating. Most people figure out at least some of this stuff as they go, you know. You don't have to have _all_ the answers before you couple up together."

"No, but… you have to have _enough_ answers." He shoved his chair back, went to the stairs. "C'mere. I want to show you something."

"Yeah, I'm not sure that's a good idea, bro. I know all too well what happens when you've had a few drinks and invite a girl up to your bedroom." Her tone was mocking, but her voice was just slightly guarded.

He rolled his eyes impatiently. "Sofia. You know how Gabi dated my brother, and then you dated him like seconds after he was Gabi's leftovers?"

"Umm… yep. Safe to say I remember your brother."

"Yeah." He held her brown eyes with clear, guileless blue ones that compelled her to take him seriously. "I'm not like you guys. That's not… that's not a way in which I would mess up. There are lots of others, but—not that. So come on upstairs."

She followed him, and Josh shouldered easily into his room.

"That," he said.

"Yep. That's a bed, alright."

"No, Sofia—the blanket. The point is the blanket."

"Oh." She felt a smile creep up from her heart to her face. "The one Gabi made you. Based on the one your Nonna made, and you lost in the fire." It was spread across the top of his coverlet, the focal point of the whole room, though Sofia noticed it was more toward one side of the bed than the other. Josh's side, she guessed.

"Yes." He reached down to pat it as though it were a reflex he couldn't help, as swift as blinking. "I'm showing you this for a reason. Don't keep my secret, Sofia. Tell her there's not gonna be a woman in my bed while this blanket is there. And this blanket's gonna be there a while. I'm not—I'm not waiting, Sofia. I'm… changing."

There it was. Finally. The missing verb that was driving him.

"I see," she said clearly. And then, "I'll tell her."

He rode down the elevator with her to the parking garage at the end of the evening, after she declined his invitation to come out for a drink with his tech buddies. He stopped her before she ducked into Gabi's car.

"I know I shouldn't ask, but—her date? Last night?"

Sofia clapped his shoulder. "Gambling addict. Tried to get her to bet on whether they'd have sex at the end of the night. Lost track of her at a poker game. She was home by nine."

He nodded, took it in like a wall takes in a missing brick. "Thanks."

"Thanks for dinner."

"Yeah. Anytime."

Because protectiveness was Josh's second and third nature, he leaned back on the concrete wall behind him while she started the car and she got out onto the street.

Now if only he could figure out how to protect himself.


	3. Chapter 3 - Food & Insecurity

The months that followed were kaleidoscopic, with the same pieces combining and recombining in different, dizzying configurations:

Gabi's love life kept failing, in increasingly ridiculous ways. She told him about the guys she was seeing, haltingly at first and then more easily as time went on, over lunches at the diner. Some were, as Josh thought of them, the "Gabi special." Deadbeats, plain and simple. Some, he could see, were symptoms of her characteristic terrible luck: a man trying to use a dating app to convince someone to serve as a surrogate for him and his wife (and then Josh lost some sleep worrying she'd agree to do it, as she took on the personal quest of solving their fertility problem). There was an actual porn star, who took sex off the table because it was "too much like work." One guy seemed promising and then he and Gabi realized they were second cousins and couldn't get past it.

She dated guys as though they were themed for holidays—a single father of no fewer than seven children at Father's Day, a firefighter around the Fourth of July. The porn star broke up with her on Labor Day for not respecting his work-life boundaries.

Elliot was also failing, in his ongoing quest to find a personal chef for Josh who met all of their respective specifications. Josh wasn't that eager for him to succeed, either, for reasons he didn't fully understand. It wasn't just that he didn't want to see anyone in Gabi's place. It was that… there was just something about cooking for himself. It was like therapy, but unlike his experience with actual therapy, there was no danger of unfortunate romantic feelings developing between him and his cookbooks.

Yolanda's daughter came home from her deployment, and Josh hired her as a coding intern and started training her while she applied to graphic design programs. Her son married Cheryl, in as beautiful a ceremony as Josh had ever paid for—so beautiful that a jealous Elliot had to be thwarted from sabotaging it.

Sofia had gone to work for Logan's start-up and was working all the hours under the sun. Logan guarded Sofia's time vigilantly. Josh actually had to trade connections and, now and then, his own labor, so that Sofia could be allowed out for an occasional coffee and check-in. Fixing a display issue on their website one day in August took him about three minutes, but he pretended it took three hours to buy Sofia a longer break. (Gabi, he knew, had other means of extracting her, more covert ones that likely traded on some combination of charm, looks, and simply ignoring Logan's rules.)

But the real story of the summer was that Josh had decided that one missing dimension of his life was in service to someone besides his friends. Gradually, he decided to funnel a larger portion of his money and time toward charitable ends.

Whatever insane idea his mother had about Gabi not being good enough for him, Josh had no trouble recalling why her opinion counted for so little. He remembered what it had been like growing up with a single mom who was persistently between jobs, who drifted in and out of town as her boyfriends changed, and in and out of consciousness as her blood alcohol level did. His mother had always had champagne tastes, but a small but steady stream of money from her parents—and time with his Nonna—had blunted the worst of the consequences of his mother's alternately reckless and indifferent parenting. But he could remember scraping together loose change to buy crackers and peanut butter for his brother one two-week stretch when his mother had left them alone longer than she usually did. He must have been about eight.

He had been terrified.

So with his own history and current form of therapy in mind, Josh started meeting with representatives from CalFresh, the state food benefits program, and local food pantries and shelters. He came to see the ways in which the high rate of food insecurity in San Francisco County was related to the gap between rich and poor—with so many very wealthy people, grocery stores and restaurants set price points which even people well above the poverty level struggled with. He met, too, with professors at Berkeley and Stanford who'd proposed solutions like giving hefty tax credits to owners of AirBnBs if they converted the space to affordable housing; or converting the city's 1,500 "underused alleys" into green spaces and community gardens. The influx of techies, he knew from reading the paper every day, had displaced lower-income people from old neighborhoods where they'd once been better-connected to resources in churches and community organizations.

There wasn't a "food crisis" in San Francisco so much as a set of interrelated crises in food, shelter, community culture, and employment for those without technical skills.

So "CHEF" was born, the acronym standing for Culture/Housing/Employment/Food. Josh's idea was to chip away at all the above problems at once. He began purchasing AirBnB properties in the city's old neighborhoods and working to set them up as co-ops, where low-income adults and families could live, improve skills in growing food that was relevant and interesting to their palates and cooking it at the food kitchens already in place around the city. He worked to simultaneously get his co-op residents networked into the rich array of job training opportunities around the city. They were contracted to live in the housing he was building up for three-year rotating terms. Over the course of that long summer, he became something that felt like a combination landlord and college counselor to the first eighty participants in his program.

He was more excited about his life than he'd ever been. He was also, rapidly, overwhelmed.

"CHEF needs a governing board," he told Gabi over a turkey burger and a side salad at the diner. "I want you to be on it."

"Josh, I was twenty minutes late to work this morning because I dropped a quarter in the toilet and needed it to get through the day. I don't think you're thinking clearly."

"You wouldn't be the only person," he grinned. "But you're the only actual chef I know—other than Adrianna, who's…"

Now Gabi grinned. "Not available."

"Right. I need someone with great skills to find me first-rate cooks and seeds and to source food for the kitchens. Someone who will signal to the folks in the program that I'm serious about it—give it the dignity of expertise. And I need it to be someone who shares my vision. And Gabi, you always have. You've been the biggest cheerleader of the program all along. You gave me half the reading I did on food scarcity and food cultures. C'mon. It's just a monthly meeting." This, of course, was a big fat lie. But he kept his face innocent by taking a big fat bite of his burger.

"That's a big fat lie, Josh. And you know it. And _I_ know that you'll be chairman of said board, and _you_ know, furthermore, that I have solemnly sworn never to work for you again."

"Well—technically—you'd be volunteering and not working. No money would change hands. And you and the rest of the Board would each have individual votes that count as much as mine. No veto power here. I just call meetings to order and get them catered." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes to see if she was buying it. "It's not bossy at all."

"I don't think…"

"Gabi. Don't do it for me." And here came his ultimate manipulation. "Do it for the one in ten folks in this county who will experience food or housing insecurity sometime this year."

After all that, she didn't have it in her to refuse—not when she'd wanted to do it so badly in the first place.

And she excelled; it was the perfect forum for her rare brand of charisma and doggedness. Josh shouldn't have been surprised, but he found in the months that followed that Gabi had a gift for board service like nothing that Josh had ever even heard of.

At mixers and fundraisers, she'd inadvertently insult potential donors with fully two million times her net worth, and then somehow bowl them over with her vision, and, more than once, talk them into putting two million dollars into the organization.

She was so competent and well-loved on Josh's Board that she was on the losing side of votes on the Board exactly never. She wormed her way even into the heart of old Horatio Xiu, Josh's mentor from his time at CalTech who had set him on his way over a decade ago. Horatio used three words to say what took most people twenty, and he held himself aloof from just about everyone but his own wife, and Josh, whom he treated as a son. And then—Gabi. Gabi, for whom he calmly pulled out a chair one afternoon when she stumbled into a special session slightly drunk, slid a glass of water her way, and then froze the mildly scandalized expressions on the faces of the rest of the Board with a single quelling glance and the words, "Let's give Gabriella a moment."

Gabi charmed local property owners into selling prime real estate to Josh at a discount, and bamboozled major grocers and local co-ops alike into donating food and putting donation boxes at their registers. She ran community forums to help integrate the CHEF sites into neighborhoods, made deals with food banks, built the program up to aid nursing homes and school lunch initiatives, designed logos and pitched slogans and browbeat Josh's web development team into making them work. She spent a lot of time arguing with city council members. And above all, she came to know all the participants personally. After all, she cooked with them.

And she cooked, and she cooked, and she cooked.

 _And_ she held down her job at the diner, somehow.

So when it was creeping on toward time for Gabi's disaster of a Halloween boyfriend—at her level of thematic success, the man might actually be a ghost—Josh decided to intervene. Again. He cornered her at the diner one afternoon on his way out the door.

"You have to accept a position—a paid position—with CHEF. Executive director."

"Listen, I'm not that great at spelling, but if you need me to skywrite the words 'I'M NOT WORKING FOR YOU JOSH' in order to get the message…."

"Well. Technically—"

"No! No technicalities! I won't do it again. It's—I can't. She stared at him, her oceanic eyes wide and enreating. "I _can't._ "

Josh allowed himself to feel wounded. "Gabi. This is not a charitable offer. You've raised as much as the Board would pay you this year in the last _week_."

Her jaw dropped. "The Board would pay me eight hundred thousand dollars?"

"No. They wouldn't. That's my point. You're out-earning your own salary at the most extraordinary rate imaginable. And in that way and a dozen others, you're already _doing_ the job. You'd have just as much autonomy—you know you and Horatio run the Board even if I chair it, right? You wouldn't lose anything. Except this deadend job."

"I got promoted to short order cook," she said weakly.

"Congratulations. Now get promoted to executive director of a multimillion dollar non-profit organization that's building a more just city and county."

She closed her eyes as she spoke the next time. " _No_."

"OK." Josh mulled over his next move for a moment, pushed some fries around on his plate. "Then—I'll step down from the Board."

"Josh—no!" Her hand hit the table with a thud, followed by the clatter of the dishes all along the counter. "This is your dream. Your idea. Your money, your connections—your research, your _values_ —made it all possible. You're not stepping down. Or—if you do, I will."

Josh let that settle in his chest for just a moment. Horatio, whom Josh had been talking to in lieu of therapy, had a technique for dealing with unsolveable problems. _Just tie them to a balloon and picture them floating away. They'll come back to Earth when they are ready to be solved._ Josh tied Gabi's job to a balloon, let it hover above him in the sky. "You coming by tonight for Phyl and Horatio's anniversary party?"

"Yep. Phyl wants brownies and not cake, but a party without cake… I compromised. You'll see."

"Can't wait."

He could. He wasn't _waiting_ for Gabi. But he found, lately, that his patience was growing and growing.

She stopped him in the doorway. "Josh. It means a lot to me—not working for you. It means a lot that you're letting it go."

He could hear her. _Let it go_ , she was saying.

So he just nodded, glanced up at the balloon out of the corner of his mind's eye. And walked on.


	4. Chapter 4 - Gabi's Blueberry Muffin

Gabi stayed to help him clean up after their friends left Horatio and Phyl's anniversary party, many of them raving about the "Slutty Brownie Cake" she'd made, modified from an internet recipe which called for a layer of brownie, a layer of a chocolate chip cookie cake, and a layer of oreo cake, held together with buttercream ganache, which she'd made at CHEF's commercial kitchen earlier in the day.

"The cake lived up to its name," Josh told her as he held open a trash bag for her to shove the last of the stray plates into. She raised an eyebrow. "Went fast and easy," he offered.

She laughed. "Did you doubt it?"

He left her wiping down his kitchen island to drop the trash down its chute. When he came back, he grabbed her arm in mid-swipe from where she was rubbing at a stubborn sticky mess of someone's spilled cocktail. "Hey. I've got extra cleaners coming in to help Yolanda with this tomorrow. So… come sit me on the terrace a while—friend?"

"I—OK. No need to ask me twice. Long day." She threw herself on the lounger theatrically. "In fact, you would not believe the day I had— _friend_. My former boss and ex-boyfriend is totally houndingme to quit my day job—"

"He sounds like an asshole," Josh said gravely. "A good-looking, successful, charismatic asshole."

"Something's wrong with your ears." Now it was his turn to chuckle. "Meanwhile, my current boss wants me to take off Monday so I can work two twelve-hour shifts on Tuesday and Wednesday."

"Yeah, that sounds like a great job, you should definitely keep that one—"

"Josh."

"Sorry." He tossed his head up and looked at the sky. "Really. I get it."

She nodded, mollified. " _Then_ I had to bake two layer cakes and come to a cocktail reception and no one fed me anything but appetizers and so now I'm cold _and_ hungry."

"But so brave with it." Josh's inner boy scout had set him on his feet practically before she'd raised the stakes. "Be back in a jiffy, princess."

He was, and when he was, he was carrying two things: an over-sized, homemade blueberry muffin, courtesy of his morning insomnia, and a familiar hand-crocheted throw blanket over his left arm.

"I have other dreams, Gabi." He draped the blanket over her shoulders and pressed her suddenly nerveless fingers around the muffin. "Than CHEF. You said earlier—I couldn't step down because it was my dream. But… I have others."

She dropped the muffin onto his wrought iron patio table. "You know what? So do I." She stood up, shook the blanket from around her. Let her fingers stroke idly over it, watched Josh's eyes follow them hungrily as they did.

When she finally spoke, she said the last thing he expected. _Gabi._ "There's been—no one else—since Hawai'i?"

Josh felt like someone had simultaneously dropped a heavy weight on his chest, and like he'd tied his own heart to a balloon, and let it float off. So Sofia had told her, about the blanket, about what he was doing, all his—waiting without waiting. His _changing_. "No. God. No one."

He watched her breathe that in, deeply, once and then again. And then, all in one lightning-swift Gabi motion, she whipped the blanket around his shoulders and used it to pull him close. "Me, neither," she whispered above his lips.

That pulled Josh out of his reverie. "You—no—but—what about the golfer?"

"Nope. C'mere."

"The… the bartender?"

"Ugh. No."

"But—what about your gynecologist?"

"She's a woman, Josh. I just said 'he was getting all up in my pecan tart' to torture you."

"It worked."

"I know." She shrugged. "It's a hobby." She pulled on either side of the blanket to wedge him firmly against her. "Josh. I want you more than CHEF. Or… or food. Or…"

Josh felt the words in his knees, which threatened to give way. "I know," he managed to say. "I want you—more than anything."

Gabi's eyes, usually so much like the Pacific during a hurricane, caught the moonlight. They glowed. "Have you had anything to drink tonight?" she asked conversationally.

"I—no. Well, yes, a beer when the party started like three hours ago… You want… a glass of wine or something…?"

"No. I had one glass— _one_ glass—earlier." She started laughing. "I was just making sure we're both gonna remember this in the morning."

"Damn straight." _Finally_ , he thought. _Thank God. Finally._

She slid open the patio doors and ducked inside, leaving him staring after her. "Race ya!" she called over her shoulder. And bolted up his stairs.

To his bedroom.

 _Gabi._

He stood on the terrace for longer than he should have, took in the stars and the moonlight, memorized the feeling of standing there, heart tied to a balloon and drifting above him, a bright moon on his face, the evening's chill on his cheeks, his hand-crocheted blanket like a cape around his shoulders. He filed it all away, as a kind of emotional profile for a feeling with no name.

And then he went after her.

"It's not a race," he said in the doorway of his bedroom. Seeing her sprawled out on his bed made him almost eat his words.

"You're just saying that 'cause I won."

"Gabi." He knelt down on the bed next to her, trailed a hand across her belly. Saw her tremble there. "We're _both_ gonna win."

He took her mouth—or she took his—it wasn't long before he was hazy on the details. He noticed, vaguely, when her hands slid up his chest, when her leg came creeping up around his hip. Dimly, he became aware of the taste of blueberries.

"When did you have time to eat that muffin?" he asked thickly.

He felt more than saw the impish grin that stole her lips from him. "You're getting slow, old man. Can't keep up with my muffin."

Josh felt soft yarn pooling on his right side, spread it out, and rolled Gabi once, twice, into the nest it made. "I'll take care of your muffin, sweetheart. And you're gonna be glad I'm _slow_."

Her laugh quickly turned into a low, feminine groan.

After that, there were colors. The peach of her skin, the riesling and whiskey of her hair, the strawberry shades of her bra, her mouth, her tongue.

And there were textures. Skin, yarn, lace, underwire, skin, the cool cotton blend of the sheets, the leather of his headboard. More skin, hot and damp like her breath. On his skin.

And, oh, God, there were sounds. Her gasps, his short groans, her keening cries, the slight swish of cotton on leather, the clap of skin on skin like primal applause. His shouts—her screams, interrupted by more gasps—the word "yes" tumbling over both of their lips again. And again. And again.

For Josh, the world eventually reduced to the throbbing insistence that this woman, his woman, had built inside him, and to her smell—sweat and lilacs and sex—and her taste—blueberries and sweat and honey-sweet cinnamon.

They showered, touching each other all the while, little aftershocks of pleasure tingling through them. When Josh turned out the lights, and got Gabi tucked firmly in his arms under all their blankets, he felt like he had crossed, momentously but seamlessly, from one part of his life into the next.

"I've never heard you go this long without talking," he murmured.

She snuggled closer. "I always say the wrong thing."

"We both do." Josh kissed the top of her head. "You're right. Tonight, we'll just… be."

She nodded into his chest, and threw one of her legs over his to twine further into his body. And she woke him up once more during the night, as hungry for him as he was for her. They'd been starved for so long. Per their agreement, they said little with words.

When morning came, Josh slept later than he had in weeks. But—as he'd expected before he was fully awake, before he'd even fallen asleep—Gabi was gone. And she didn't leave a note, a stray stitch of clothing, nor so much as a crumb.


	5. Chapter 5 - Prince of Lattes

The weeks took on a patternless pattern. Josh would go into the diner for lunch, as many days as he could. "Will I see you tonight?" he would ask when he got up to go. She would say 'yes' or 'nope, got plans,' or 'maybe, I'll call you later.' Regardless of whatever she said, she came as many nights as she didn't, but not any more than half. She would come late, watch TV, do some reading or write emails for the Board, play video games. They had sex in every room of the house, in the tub, and once, mostly under their blanket, out on the terrace.

She never came early enough for dinner—and although she didn't always wake up or get up before he did, she never stayed for breakfast.

It was this last that left Josh permanently on edge. He had Gabi's company, her dizzying conversation. He had her body. But in the engines of his own body, there was a rock clattering down in the deep, echoing around a kind of hunger and a kind of fear.

Gabi was withholding food from their relationship. At least, food that was freely shared.

She sold him food at the diner, and he was careful not to violate her silent boundaries by ordering anything with too many special amendments, anything she'd have to cook herself. He had board meetings catered, as he always had, and she ate, alongside everyone, with her usual gusto. She'd grab already-prepared food out of his kitchen if she was hungry when she came over—a granola bar, an apple, some yogurt—but she wouldn't so much as microwave popcorn there.

He offered to take her to dinner and she refused, implacably. He asked her to stay in the morning for bagels—omelettes—French toast—freaking Poptarts. She demurred.

He tried to meet her for lunch on her days off, anywhere but the diner, and she fobbed him off with hollow excuses in a bright, cheerful tone that asked him to ask no questions in order to keep the peace.

He kept the peace. Most days, the peace was worth it. He thought as much when he got a text from her with a picture of a winking parrot and a caption that said "See you 2nite, matey." He thought it was worth it on the night he woke up at three in the morning to find her crawling into bed beside him, mumbling about how she couldn't sleep at home.

It was just… there was that rock, rattling around down in the machinery of his body, echoing, reminding him that something here was, fundamentally, empty.

So he helped Logan poach another friend's marketing director in order to buy Sofia's freedom for coffee one afternoon in the middle of November. "I think she's trying to _When Harry Met Sally_ me," he told her, in dead earnestness.

"That's not what I heard," Sofia's eyes danced with mischief. "I heard she didn't fake that orgasm in the diner _at all_."

Josh fought a blush. Christ, these two really did tell each other everything. "That's not what I meant." He rocked his chair back, contemplatively. "She's—slow-rolling me. You know. Keeping me within arm's length…"

"Within genital's length," Sofia corrected. "I hear you've got nothing to complain about there, either."

"What a comfort." Josh rocked forward this time. "What I mean is, she's giving me friendship—and sure, sex—but no real intimacy. And I don't know how to change that without spooking her, Sof. I'm afraid we'll keep up this hot-and-cold stuff for twenty years and somehow never go on an actual date—never talk about anything real, anything about us—never make any promises or plans—never have children or—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Sofia held up her small but commanding hand. "Rein it in. Give her a minute, big JoJo, before you plan the next sixty years. We're twenty-five over here. And you two have earned your lack of trust, the hard way, with other people's tongues down your throats. And finally… she's trying."

"Is she?" Josh rocked back again, farther this time. "It feels more like she thinks of me like—like an addiction she's managing as long as she gets me in small doses. Not as a partner—or… or confidante. Barely as a friend. Like an acquaintance with benefits."

"Stop rocking, dude. You're seriously gonna fall over, and since you're everyone's favorite neighborhood tech half-billionaire, it'll end up as a gif that'll haunt you for life."

"Right." He planted his feet. "Right. So I think I have two options."

"Yep." Sofia took it as obvious. "Patience. Or—the grand gesture."

"I keep going 'round in circles on it. I feel like I could lose her either way."

"Of course you could. Or some other way. That's life. And you're talking about life with _Gabi_ , who courts unusually weird disasters."

Josh started to rock back and forth again without thinking about it, and it was just as Sofia had predicted—he fell backwards with a crash, directly into the woman sitting behind him at a table with her two well-dressed indeterminately ethnic children, who were perfectly composed as they watched every liquid around them tumble toward him onto the floor. "Oh, God. Whoops. Yep, I'm OK. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me me buy you a round of replacement drink? Juices and… what kind of coffee, miss?"

While Josh spent the next ten minutes buying mugs and coffee cake and gift cards for the whole family and making conciliatory conversation well beyond the amount most people would have found necessary, Sofia sent Gabi amusing texts and pics of the whole scene. If it ended up on the internet, it would be her doing, after all.

Finally, she sent Gabi a text of the two children, Camille and Rogan, hugging Josh while he promised to come see their school play. _It's #sojosh_ , she wrote. Gabi wrote back with a single, eloquent emoji, of a frog on a lilypad, wearing a gold crown and the traces of a smirk.

He was pretty committed to the knight in shining armor routine, if nothing else.

"Sorry about that," Josh finally returned to their conversation. "But Sofia—I just want to know—do you think she could ever… love me again?"

Sofia knew that it had been hard for him to say out loud, but she didn't have much patience, herself, for their dithering anymore. She drained the dregs of her latte with a noisy slurp. "I don't know, dude. Here's what I can tell you." She glanced back at her phone, and then shoved it in her purse. "You have a tendency to over-compensate, and to over-reach." She stood, grabbed her keys, and turned to go. "It's just… she needs the frog more than the prince."

Josh took his replacement coffee to go. And he walked around with that pronouncement ringing in his ears for a long while.


	6. Chapter 6 - Nonna's Cookbook

The next night Gabi stayed in the penthouse was three days later—a Monday, and her day off. Josh got up before her, even took the risk of going for a run. _Patience_ , he thought. If she was gone when he got back, there would be another day.

But she was still in bed when he got in the shower, and was just sliding on last night's jeans when he came out of the bathroom in only a pair of boxers and a towel he was rubbing briskly over the top of his head.

"Hey. You can leave clothes here, you know. I cleared out a drawer and there's plenty of room in the closet."

"So you've mentioned." She smiled tightly. "Well, gotta get off to my busy day. TV to catch up on, potential donors to stalk on social media, Alan & Eliott's adoption application acceptance celebration dinner to prepare. Pacific rockfish doesn't grill itself. So…"

"Gabi. Stay for breakfast."

"Can't, champ. Remember? _Scandal,_ tech mogul Joe Murray's cat's Instagram feed, adopt-a-thon 2016?"

"It can wait a half hour. Let me make you pancakes." He saw her hesitate. And he hadn't gotten to his level of success without learning when to press an advantage. "My Nonna's recipe. With a coconut and mango compote. Please."

"Josh…"

"Extra homemade rum-kissed whipped cream," he bargained.

There was some faint gleam of… of pleasure, he thought… in the back of her eyes. She made his day: "Deal," she breathed, barely audibly.

He beamed. "Excellent. Now shower while I defrost the compote. You smell like a thirty-one-year-old tech tycoon."

"Funny. I thought I smelled like a thirty-one-year-old monkey with delusions of its own grandeur."

He swooped in and kissed her, peachily, more wet than he intended. "So you do. Let the monkey keep his delusion, huh? See you downstairs."

His first order of business was to hang a note on the door for Yolanda and Elliot to make themselves scarce until after 10. And he was humming, actually humming, as he whipped the batter together. As she came downstairs, he was a little chagrined to find that it was Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," of all things; a bit too on the nose. He was just pouring the first set of three cakes onto a hot buttered griddle when Gabi hoisted herself onto a stool out the counter, clad in a black tank top and pale blue shorts, her hair blown only partly dry.

"Honey." He'd been thinking about what he wanted to say for the last fifteen minutes. He took a breath. "I'm gonna give you three things this morning and I want you to take all of them without fighting me on it. Please."

"Sounds kinky, boss."

"I'm not your boss," he reminded her.

"Wow. You finally realized."

"This," he slid his Nonna's spiral-bound recipe book, all the pages hand-written, ingredient-stained, sometimes lovingly annotated, across the table, "is the first."

"Oooh. Nonna's recipes? You wouldn't share before. Greedy Josh. Oh. Wow," she ran her eyes over the recipe for the pancakes she was about to consume. "A quarter teaspoon of nutmeg? That's interesting, Nonna. And—wow, these liquid proportions are surprising—she didn't stint on the buttermilk, did she? Sly old lady…" She flipped a page. "My God, I didn't know they'd even _invented_ crispy green beans back then, and what was your Nonna doing calling it polenta and not grits….?"

Josh let her stream of commentary wash pleasantly over him as he flipped the first batch of pancakes straight into the trash. "I always ditch the first ones," he responded to her raised brow. It was true, although 'always' consisted only of the four months since he'd started cooking at all.

"Your griddle probably wasn't quite hot enough," she offered quietly, seemingly unable to stop herself, and then turned determinedly back to the cookbook, cooing softly to it as she made new discoveries.

Ten minutes later, he flipped the last of the cakes he'd cooked onto her plate, set the maple syrup on the bar, and grabbed a spoon for the whipped cream.

"OK. Number two. Breakfast is served."

Trying to keep the tone of the whole event casual, Josh had set their places along the breakfast bar instead of at the table. He didn't want her to suddenly notice they were sharing a meal at no cost and freak out.

So he also affected a cool disinterest he was far from feeling as he watched Gabi butter, add compote, pour a small amount of syrup, and heap a healthy dollop of whipped cream onto her stack of pancakes. She used her knife and fork methodically to cut out her first bite—perfectly well-cooked in the middle, he was relieved to see.

But then she just… looked at it, on her fork, from one angle after another, a sort of baffled expression on her face. She finally, much to his relief, chewed, and swallowed. Sat a long moment. Did it again. When she put down her fork for the fourth time without speaking, Josh drew his line.

"Well…?" he asked.

"These are…"

" _Yes_?"

"They're… God. You must know."

"Gabi. You're actually killing me."

She smiled at that, almost proudly. "They're _delicious_ ," she concluded. "It's pretty shocking. I mean, they could use a pinch of salt and you let the batter settle just a little too long before cooking them, but… how did you learn to cook like this, Josh?"

Josh smiled. "I've been… practicing… over the last few months. I started with Julia Child but I balked at all the cow brains and so on. I dug out my Nonna's cookbook… and I started reading some food blogs and, well…"

"Wow."

"It's actually a lot like coding. The details are not just important… they're the whole ballgame, the whole point, and when it all comes together and works right…"

"You've created something much more than all those technical little parts."

"Yes. And it's satisfying. Very satisfying." He took a swallow of his coffee, considered the question of whether it was too weak, tied it to a balloon. "Don't get me wrong—I don't have 'delusions of grandeur' here. Really. It's really not like coding, because, well, I'm not that good at it. I'd be lost without a recipe. But it's really made me appreciate what _you_ can do."

Gabi shook her head ruefully. "I didn't know how much I needed to hear you say that." She took a much bigger bit and, mouth still full—pure Gabi—said, "Maybe I should learn something about coding."

"I can…" Josh let himself trail off before he offered to teach her. The whole point of this whole exercise was to level the playing field between them. Teacher-student was no better than boss-employee. "I've got a friend. Julia. Lady coder. Very hip, lots of tattoos. Lesbian—I think. But don't get any ideas… anyway, she teaches CSS and HTML for beginners."

"Cool." She seemed, visibly, to relax and he let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.

Breakfast, from there, had many topics—Joe Murray's cat's Instagram chief among them. It was… easy. He left his hand on her leg without thinking about it. She leaned—almost fell—into him laughing when he pulled up Guggenheim the cat's thought-bubbled photostream on his phone.

He tried to stop her when she stood up to clear, but then she said one of the most healing sentences they'd ever heard between them, kissing away his objection. "Whoever cooked didn't have to clean—that was my parents' rule," she told him easily.

He waited until her back was turned to pump his fist triumphantly in the air, at that. God. This was working. God, God… Thank God.

He let her load the dishwasher and she let him put away was left of the whipped cream, syrup and mango compote.

"OK. Now I really gotta go. Shonda Rhimes. Strategically using Guggenheim's point of view to extract a donation from his owner. Adoption-themed fancy food." She crossed to him, put her hands flat up against the front of his shoulders, and looked as deep into his eyes as she ever had. Then she kissed him, slowly and thoroughly. "Thanks for breakfast, honey. Except… what was the third thing?"

Josh, sometimes, tried to feel the vibrations of the universe, and they were strong now, warm and strong, and telling he needed to wait on what he'd intended to give her—to let today's victories settle. So he made a last-second play switch. "Just this," he said, scooping her off her feet and lugging her toward the couch. "A half hour more."

"You think thirty minutes naked with you is a 'gift'?" she dimpled, pretending to be miffed. She hit him on the arm playfully.

"These will be." He whipped off her tank over her head and had to bite his lip. God damn, but she was beautiful. "I promise."


	7. Chapter 7 - Breakfast With Caroline

Gabi was very much a woman, and not a saint. Still, the first time she found herself alone with Josh's journal, sitting in plain sight on his nightstand, she resisted the thrumming pressure from her brain to her fingertips, her shrieking nerve endings tell her to _just open it_.

The next time, it was on the kitchen counter while Josh ran out to bail Elliot's father out of prison—the particulars, Gabi didn't quite grasp, but they seemed to involve turtlenecks and a misunderstanding around a graffito. She sat at the kitchen island near it; then moved it to the coffee table, and found herself sitting on the couch. Finally, she set a ficus on it, as it to smother its cries: _Read meeeeeeeeeee._

Perhaps it was only in her head.

It seemed, in the days that followed, to be everywhere—on the outside ledge of the hot tub, wedged in the couch cushions, on the closet floor.

One morning, two weeks before Christmas, Gabi woke to find it lying beside her in an otherwise empty bed. There was a note on top—Josh's handwriting. "Got up early to do some journaling. Will be at the downtown office this morning until 11. Spend your day off at the penthouse if you want and I'll see you for lunch." He signed a heart, and then his name.

Gabi traced the heart once, twice. Wondered if he'd written it intentionally—after all, Josh hadn't told her he loved her since they started sleeping together. Maybe it meant nothing?

But maybe it did. And maybe the answer as to whether it did was in the notebook, there beneath it. And since Josh wouldn't be home until eleven….

Not giving the angel and devil on her respective shoulders time for a debate, Gabi jerked open the object of her temptation to a random page. "Confess everything, Josh," she murmured challengingly.

It was dated three weeks before.

 _Had breakfast with Caroline this morning…_

"What?" Gabi went from vaguely guilty to instantly outraged. "He didn't tell me he was eating a meal with Caroline. What else is he…" The guilt resurfaced. "OK, right, I didn't tell him I was gonna read his journal either, so we'll call it square for the moment." She turned back to the page at hand.

 _She's still just the same. Beautiful, smart, poised, confident. She has that voice that sounds like money. Did I mention beautiful?_

"Jesus, Josh, we _get_ it."

 _But my God, so unbelievably cold. And the conversation. Christ, it was boring. Her world is so small. As in, it consists only of her. When I asked how her parents were doing, she told me about the new Audi her dad bought for her. When I asked about her husband, I heard about their poolhouse remodel for ten minutes before she confessed he'd moved out._

"Moved out? Do not get any ideas, Caroline," Gabi warned the page. "Lots of people can say, 'I will cut you,' but not very many of them have my training."

 _I could tell she was fishing for some reason to tell her friends I was pining for her. She'll probably tell them that regardless. I told her I was seeing Gabi, that we were taking it slow, and she said, 'Poor Juju, you must be starved for stimulating company.'_

"I will CUT you!" Gabi yelled, stabbing a finger fiercely at the page. Her heart was actually racing. "God, I hate you." Caroline got under her skin like no one else, worse than any of Josh's other girlfriends. It was because she was so opposite from Gabi herself. Dark where Gabi was fair, calculating where Gabi couldn't figure out her own tips at the diner, rich where Gabi's credit score was probably a negative number. Educated at Stanford, when Gabi's diploma came from the school of Hard Knocks, Hard Choices, and Hard Liquor.

"And, of course, Josh slept with me and then asked you to marry him a few hours later, so…." She shook her head. "Ugh. What do you see in her? No, that's not the question. The question is, how could one person possibly love both her and me?"

She turned back to Josh's journal, as though it could hear her.

 _But honestly, all I could think was: what did I ever see in her?_

"Oh. Maybe you _can_ hear me."

 _She's thoughtless, dictatorial, a total snob, and to say that she's 'distant' would be like pretending I thought she had emotions, somewhere far off. She didn't like my friends, didn't want to hear about my job, didn't like baseball, video games,_ The Wire, _or anything else I like. She treated the people who work for me like servants. How did I never notice she was so boring? And the other thing is, I swear to God I never saw her eat anything but salad or drink anything but cocktails in two years._

"That's what I kept saying!" Gabi cried. "She was having secret meals without the rest of us. Where? With whom? Does she have weird teeth or… why?"

 _I think we would never even have dated except that I first met her at that party her parents threw for her when she finished her master's. Her dad was so proud, and Rita, her step-mom, is so warm. And seeing how they were with her got to me. I wanted what Caroline had so badly that I couldn't see that she's nothing like them. And actually, just the opposite. That she's exactly like my mother._

"Oh, yikes, Josh. Seriously, yikes."

 _I can see Caroline doing all the things Mom did. Leaving a ten-year-old in charge of a household while she ran off to Napa with her boyfriend for a week. Forgetting her children's birthdays one day a year, and lying about their ages or making them lie about hers on all the others. Asking them to cover for her with neighbors and people at her job, at school. Pulling kids out of school for impromptu shopping trips and vacations. Leaving them with their grandparents with no word of when she'd be back._

 _The only difference is that Mom always slipped me a $20 when she left me and Jake alone, and Caroline would definitely leave more money than that. So maybe our children wouldn't have gone hungry._

With that, Gabi's heart ripped neatly in two. She closed Josh's journal, set it down carefully. Extra carefully, because she wanted to throw it across the room. And she buried her head in her hands.

After a while of thinking about a small Josh, alone with a younger brother to take care of with a twenty dollar bill in his pocket and no idea when his mother would be home, she let the tears come.

And they came.

And that was how Josh found her. His dark t-shirt and his hair were slightly sweaty, because he'd biked home from the office. But he ditched his plans of hitting the shower instantaneously.

"Gabi—honey—what's wrong?" He was beside her with arms wrapped around her in a flash.

She just cried harder. "I'm… so… sorry," she choked out between sobs.

"It's OK. Whatever it is. It's OK. He held her tighter as she shook harder. "But you gotta tell me what it is. You're scaring me."

"I," she gulped, "should've," _gulp_ , "let you go to," _heave_ , "therapy." She sniffed, her shoulders shuddering slightly. "Without trying to," _sniff_ , "rush you."

"I… OK?" Josh kept running a soothing hand down Gabi's back. "What's brought this on? Then his eyes fell on his journal, on the far side of the blankets. A clutch of dread crept into his abdomen. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes." Gabi pulled herself regretfully out of his arms. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have, but I did. I read your journal."

Josh swallowed. "And…?"

"And I understand a little better now. What you went through, I mean. What you're trying to get past. And, well, God. Why do I _do_ things like this? I know I violated your trust and I can't possibly expect you to forgive me—again—but I'm also just so grateful to understand…"

Josh, whose heartbeat was like a drumroll before a pageant winner was announced and who felt, oddly to Gabi, exactly as expectant, gripped her shoulders tightly. "So that's your answer," he said.

"My 'answer'? To what?" Gabi shook her head.

He took a steadying breath. "What, exactly, did you read?"

"About—about your breakfast with Caroline? Last month? About how she's," tears welled up in Gabi's eyes again, "just like your mom."

Josh's heart slowed, and his sense of time sped back up to a normal rate. "I see," he said evenly, his expression unreadable.

"I mean, to be honest, even though she has a lot going for her in some ways, I never understood how someone like you could fall for someone with such a terrible… heart."

Josh's brows lifted. "Someone like me?"

"You know. Generous, funny, smart, kind, protective, loyal, warm, did I say generous? It was like you couldn't see her. Like she was invisible to you."

He was afraid to even blink, now that he had Gabi talking. _Finally_. "I saw her. Eventually. Thanks to you."

"Yeah, eventually, but… I think that was why I was afraid to trust you later. You know? Like when you started having your 'commitment issues'? I thought that the part of you that'd wanted Caroline—who'd actually planned to _marry_ Caroline—was you. Was the real you, your truest self. And you were hesitating with me because you realized you were just slumming with me, and, being you, you felt guilty about it. About leading me on."

Josh felt for the vibrations of the universe, and took their cue. He let the silence stretch and hoped she'd unlock more of what had gone wrong between them.

"That's not even right. Not totally. I thought—well, of course he wanted to marry someone like Caroline. Not just 'cause she's beautiful and smart and presentable and didn't actually need his money. But she was perfect because…" She swallowed. "I almost don't want to tell you."

"She was not at all perfect, Gabi. Not for me. So—tell me."

"She _was_ perfect. Because she didn't need you, either! She didn't _need_ anything from you. And you already had so many people who did, who _do_. Your mother the drunk, your brother the hobo drifter, a hundred employees. Elliot, Yolanda. And… me. So many burdens."

Well, Josh thought, the universe's vibrations be damned. "Never," he said vehemently. "You have never been a burden."

"No. Always. Paychecks. Networking opportunities. A new car. Saving my old car. Entrance to that chef competition, advice, loans, the food truck. Your blessing when I dated Cooper, and later Jake. I'm not a burden? Six months ago you were balancing the till at the diner for me."

"We were _friends_. Do you know how much you've done for me?"

"Oh, please."

"No, listen to me. You got me on the 30 under 30 list. You prevented me from marrying Caroline by making me the best birthday gift I've ever gotten. Well, second best, because marrying Caroline would have been the worst mistake of my life, and so the gift of ending that mess can't really be topped. You gave me a way and a reason to mend fences with my brother. You encouraged me to confront my demons in therapy and in my relationships, to become the man I want to be. And you've made CHEF a reality and not just a dream."

She swallowed convulsively. "Some of that doesn't count."

"And why's that?"

"Because." She thought for a moment. "I didn't intend to do it."

He stood up, moved a few feet away from her like he was trying to give her some space. He leaned back on the wall near the door frame. "Well. I didn't intend to fall in love with you. But it still, very much, counts." He held up a hand as her jaw dropped. "Hear me out. Please."

Gabi brought her feet up on the bed, tucked her knees near her chin. "'K."

"I know you have a problem being… dependent. With needing me. And I hear that. But I need you to know how I see the things I've done for you. To me, if I'm honest, they do come with strings attached. And those strings, they're what our relationship is made of. The things you've done for me are strings, too, and they tie us just as much. I want more of them. I want them to become ropes. I want neither of us to ever get free." He heard Gabi's sharply indrawn breath, rushed to reassure. "I just mean… honey. I'm dependent on you. I need you. You're what makes all of this," he gestured around them impatiently, "good. You're what makes me think I could be, well, worthy. Of better than I had come to expect from myself or anyone. Maybe even, one day, of you, if I'm lucky."

"Josh…"

"Gabi." He stalked to the bed, rifled the journal out of the mess of sheets, and shoved it into her hands. "Why do you think you've been tripping over this thing lately? I've left it out for you everywhere I could think of. Would you just read it, already? The last bit?"

Gabi looked at the blank, dark cover of the book in her hands, and then back up at him. "Are you sure?"

"More than you can imagine."

She looked at him uncertainly again, but then flipped through it to the end. "Have I told you that I really admire your penmanship?"

" _Gabi_."

She obeyed the plea in his voice where she would have ignored an order. "I'm kind of a slow reader. Give me a minute."

 _Hi, Gabi. I left my journal out for you to read because I trust you with everything I've felt. Good and bad. With every part of my life. Because I want you in all of them. You know I love you, right? Well, if you don't, you'll know once you've read this._

 _And when you've read the whole thing, I'd like you to consider a request:_

 _Gabi, would you move in with me? I'm sick of spending nights without you. Mornings without you aren't worth talking about. I'll give you more space on the DVR and three quarters of the closet. The whole closet. Whatever you want. Think about it._

 _I know I can be thoughtless and arrogant. I know it's taken me a long time to figure everything out, and that, in the meantime, I let you down. I just want you to know that I really have figured it out. That I am a man you can count on. That I will never let you down again._

 _So just consider it?_

 _(If it will help: I want you to know I also want to ask you to marry me. Soon. But I have something more romantic in mind than reading my boring soul-searching journal and knowing about all the days I pined for you.)_

 _Read it. Then come find me. Tell me we don't have to live our lives apart anymore._

 _Please._

 _Love,_

 _Josh_

Gabi looked up at the man who'd written these words for her to find—who'd known her well enough to know that eventually she'd give in to the temptation to peak into his private thoughts, who'd loved her enough not to mind.

Josh's heart was in his eyes. But when she tossed the journal behind her on the bed, he shuttered them in defeat. He grabbed the doorframe with one hand as if to brace himself. So he didn't see her stand, and cross the room. His eyes came back open only when she pressed his free hand between both of hers.

"Yes," she said clearly.

He drew in a sharp breath. "But—you haven't even read it."

Gabi smiled. She looked like she was fighting a laugh. "You love me?"

"God. Yes. You have to know, after all this, after everything. Gabriella Diamond. You're the love of my life."

Her smile widened. "And you're gonna let me take care of you—cook for you when I want, work for CHEF when and how I want, and interfere in your life at random intervals when I feel like it?"

Now Josh's eyelids fell down over his lake-blue irises again, but not before Gabi saw that they were bright with hope.

"When have I ever stopped you?" he whispered roughly.

Her head fell companionably on his ready shoulder. She felt, suddenly and completely, at home. Still, she was not one to let a moment of advantage like this one slip away in the mire of gushy feelings. "You gonna let me pursue my own dreams in my own way?"

His stroke on her shoulder asked her to look at him again. "I can't promise I won't try to help. It would be unnatural. I'll just promise that I'll listen to you when you want me to stop."

"That's acceptable. And another thing," she tilted her head back to beam a smile his way. "You're a computer genius, Josh. Write your journal on your freaking computer and I'm sure you can figure out how to keep me and everyone else out of it. And don't be afraid to keep a secret or two from me. Just, you know, nothing big."

"Well. I don't know if I need a journal if you and I are actually _talking_. And I really do want you to read this one. I was writing to you half the time, anyway. Think of it as kind of a fucked-up love letter."

Gabi kissed the corner of his mouth. "Mmm. I really can't imagine how you're going to get more romantic than that when you propose. Nope. Hush. Not joking." He leaned down to try to kiss her, but Gabi tilted her head away. "One last thing." She adopted her best wheedling voice. "Will you come carry boxes and help me move?"

Josh's wave of a laugh, carrying as it did the riptide of his earlier fear and the undercurrent of years of regret, shook more than a bit when it bellowed out of him.

"Oh, honey," he murmured. "I know you don't want me to pay for movers for you. So yes. I will carrying boxes all day—all month if I have to. But one day you're gonna know that what's mine is yours."

"I think I'm strong enough to handle that now. So give me your worst."

"I'm gonna aim higher than that." He put his arms around her waist and spun her to face him fully. "But I have a condition of my own." He bent to press his mouth to hers, flirtatiously at first, and then persuasively. "Make dinner with me tonight," he murmured hotly into her left ear.

It sent a shiver right down her spine.

To that request, Gabi had only one thing to say, and she said it dragging Josh toward the bed behind them. "Yeah. You better believe I love you, too."


End file.
